Smoothwall vs Netsweeper

[coop1984]

Hi all, is anyone able to give a comparison of Smoothwall vs Netsweeper? Used Smoothwall for many years in various jobs so fully aware of its capabilities. Unfortunately I know nothing about Netsweeper.

 

Thanks

[ticktock]

I have no experience of Smoothwall but I would steer well clear of Netsweeper. We had it forced on us by our LA after using Lightspeed for many years (and being very happy with it). Loads of issues and still have, Radius not working, the filtering itself still not working correctly (they blamed a GPO for this!!!). You can't speak to Netsweeper directly for tech support, they hide behind their main customer. Lightspeed used to be very open and very helpful with excellent customer support. All this of course is just my opinion.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi all, is anyone able to give a comparison of Smoothwall vs Netsweeper? Used Smoothwall for many years in various jobs so fully aware of its capabilities. Unfortunately I know nothing about Netsweeper.

 

Thanks

 

we're a Netsweeper house having moved from Lightspeed. We've moved a lot of customers successfully from Smoothwal. We also have Radius integrated and working fine.

 

Netsweeper takes a bit of getting used to but once you know what you're doing it very capable. It integrates into Windows AD, Azure AD, Google etc for all the major auth sources you need. We can also do offsite filtering and even put into into 4g filtering via private APN so students can have exactly the same kind of access as they do in school no matter where they are.

 

i've plenty of people you can speak to from single schools to large multi academy trusts who are successfully using it. send me a PM if interested.

 

I think some LA's restrict what you can do with Netsweeper. We don't though.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[5tu]

I’d steer clear of Netsweeper too. We had it for a couple of years with no end of issues before moving to Smoothwall.

[JonThompson]

+1 for Lightspeed.

 

Not used Smoothwall but used Netsweeper as part of LA connection and it was terrible!

[Aprice]

I have worked with schools that have had both over the years, all of them changed back to Smoothwall in the end.

For a Secondary site I prefer to have the option of a physical appliance which Smoothwall offers.

 

The current site I work at moved from Netsweeper through LGFL to Smoothwall. Personally I'm not a fan of Netsweeper just caused problems.

Edited August 23, 2020 by Aprice

[caffrey]

We were with Smoothwall for a long time, and it just became stagnant. There was promises of better reporting etc. that just didn't materialise, plus the cost was increasing. So we moved to Netsweeper and the reporting is just as terrible and it seems to over block a lot especially on keywords etc. still I don't really get any complaints from end users.

Not sure what to do next, with everything that's happening with security on the internet, MITM filtering may become a thing of the past in the near future (and installing certs on devices is a pain anyway) - maybe DNS filtering is the way forward but I just don't know.

[eddyc]

Our LEA provide Netsweeper with our internet connection.

 

Historically it was poor but I’m talking 6+ years ago.

 

We moved to BLOXX around 5 years ago (with our LEA) for a 3 year period.

 

We went back to Netsweeper around 18 months ago. It has loads of new features and works brilliantly for us across windows and Mac devices (using active directory authentication and their wagents) and we have over 100 chrome books which also all work flawlessly using the Chrome wagent.

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi all, is anyone able to give a comparison of Smoothwall vs Netsweeper? Used Smoothwall for many years in various jobs so fully aware of its capabilities. Unfortunately I know nothing about Netsweeper.

 

Thanks

If you're looking at replacing an on-prem with another on-prem offering, take a look at Sophos - let me know if you would like a demo, or pricing.

 

cheers

 

Lee